An estimated 200 patients from Searcy, and another 350 statewide, are expected to move into community-based treatment, under the plan.

The closures mean about 980 workers, including 390 at Searcy Hospital, will lose their jobs.

“We are currently working on beefing up the resources that are available in the community to develop a continuum of care for patients ... so that the resources are available in the community,” said Tony Thompson, executive assistant to the commissioner of mental health.

Thompson said that the plan is part of a national move since the 1970s to treat mentally ill patients in the communities where they live, near their families, rather than in large mental health institutions.

In community programs, patients receive care from a team of mental health professionals while living with family or in a group home, for example, while more acute mental illness can be treated with shorter stays at smaller hospitals, Thompson said.

Under the state plan, Greil Montgomery Psychiatric Hospital in Montgomery and North Alabama Regional Hospital in Decatur will also be shuttered.

At Searcy Hospital, patients have been involuntarily committed through civil court.

Bryce Hospital in Tuscaloosa will be closed except for one wing, which will temporarily house 115 patients ordered to treatment by criminal courts, known as forensic patients, according to Thompson. Another 115 forensic patients will remain temporarily at Taylor Hardin Secure Medical Facility in Tuscaloosa, he said.

Those forensic patients will eventually be moved to a new facility being built in Tuscaloosa. That 268-bed hospital is slated to open in May 2013.

The move comes at a time when the Alabama Department of Mental Health faces potentially massive cuts because of the state’s budget struggles.

The department currently operates with $116 million in state general funds, which also includes programs for developmentally disabled residents.

Thompson said the department is bracing for a possible 25 percent cut of $29 million.

The closures would allow the department to absorb that cut and invest an additional $35 million each year for the next two years in community treatment, he said.

Community-based programs can receive federal matching funds as high as 30 percent, Thompson said, allowing the department to stretch its revenue. State mental health hospitals, however, operate entirely on state funds because no federal funds are available for such institutions, he said.

Hospital patients are being evaluated to determine where they’ll be placed after the closures, Thompson said.

The AltaPointe system has both inpatient and outpatient programs and operates a 96-bed BayPointe Hospital in Mobile. Altapointe plans to open this spring a 90-bed hospital in Daphne to be called EastPointe.

Tuerk Schlesinger, AltaPointe chief executive officer, said his organization supports the plan “as long as enough funding comes to the community to support the lack of having institutional beds.”

Without enough support to meet increased demand for services, he said, the community won’t be able to take care of patients now staying in state hospitals.

Schlesinger said he supports the Department of Mental Health’s goal of getting Alabama “to the cutting edge of how they treat people who are institutionalized."